Bought a Robotic Vacuum cleaning maid!

Yep - I'm now living in the world of George Jetson - got my own Robotic Vacuum cleaning Maid!
Well - sorta. Actually, it IS a robot - but all it does is vacuum. As far as it being a Maid - well, that is a just a "slight" bit of embellishment there, it actually resembles an overgrown pie plate on wheels ;-)

What is this wonderful invention of the future that is available today? It is a ROOMBA! Y'all can read about them HERE:

As a gadgeteer (no - that is NOT something like a mouseketeer!) who finds it difficult to resist buying techno-gadgets - I've long delayed taking the Roomba plunge until I was able to buy one inexpensively during the latest "Woot-Off" and received just it last week.

So far, the cats are pretty fascinated by it - and amazingly enough - are not afraid of it.
Unfortunately, the Roomba has no eyes, so in a Cat vs Roomba game of "Chicken" it's always the cat who flinches in the end and has to scamper out of the way.

There is a large hacking culture around these things, which I am only just beginning to dip my toes into.
It has a serial port which I am just DYING to connect a terminal up to - to be able to see what makes the Roomba tick, and if there is any way I can "improve" it :-)

Unfortunately, they have not made a stair climbing Roomba yet - so if you have more than a single floor to clean, you need multiple Roombas - unless you enjoy lugging them up and down stairs all the time...

Happy Harry Potter Day!

yeah - I'm two days late - but I hope everyone had a Happy Harry Potter Day anyhow...

Old reliable Amazon.com came through again - just like it has for books 5 and 6 in the past.
We had stood in line for book 4 at midnight - and after 2 hours in a line filled with little kids, we had vowed to never do it again.

I trashed an entire gorgeous day reading it - to ensure that when I returned to work, I would be done - in case anyone else was talking about it and possibily spoiling part of it for me.

If you have not read any of the books - visit your local library and check out the first one, this way, if you do not like it - simply return it, and you have not lost anything except for some time and possibly gas money.

I first heard of Harry Potter soon after Book 3 had come out - the local paper was printing all sorts of editorials bashing the book for "teaching kids the wrong things". The editorials were what mainly caught my interest, if it was not for them, I probably would not have known about HP until the first movie came out two years later.

In this internet age, JK Rowling has undeniably proven that the printed page is far, far from being dead. Early reports are suggesting that Book 7 has sold more copies than any other book in history - which I am sure is pretty upsetting to some people ;-)
Borders announced that they sold more copies of Book 7 in one day, than they did of Book 6 in six months.

I just hope that the children who have only read Harry Potter will try other books - before giving up on books again entirely and returning to their video games.

Now - THAT would be a cool magic trick....